Short Pronounciation question

Zachaban wrote: »

Hi.

I'm German and don't know Gaelic at all, but I'm curious how speakers of Irish language would pronounce the following name:

Raidri Conchobair

(It's a fictional, pseudo-celtic character from a fantasy game)

I have already found out that Conchobair is sometimes anglicised as "Connor", but I wonder if the pronounciation is the same or if there is a slight difference? Surely the "b" must be of some importance?

I'd pronounce it Raydree Kunchubar. The 'ch' shouldn't be too difficut for a German speaker; it'd be similar to the ch in 'auch'.

The only other way of pronouncing it is "Cunahoor". I've only heard this from a native speaker from Kerry.

JniC wrote: »

Cruh-hoor is far more common however.

That's how I say it too.


It's very common to keep the old spelling with the silent letters in names and surnames.

Mac Donnchadha
Ó Conghaile
Ó Flaithbeartaigh
etc, with poncannaí instead of Hs before the 1950s.

The old Irish pronunciation of Ruaidhrí is quite difficult actually. Firstly the initial r would have been trilled and the dh would have sounded like the th is English "this". The second r would have almost sounded like z.

dubhthach wrote: »

wouldn't it not be like the th in "that" (ð) as oppose to th in "this" (θ)? Though from what I recall reading the values of ð for dh and θ for th is reckoned to have been lost from about 1200 onwards.

In case of θ it reduced to h. Whereas ð merged with slender/broad Gh.

Sorry, you're right of course, I mean ð. In particular slender ð, which is the th in that but like a version followed by a narrow vowel. The easiest example I can think of is a made up word like "thit".

Old Irish would have had four Rs.
Broad Lentis R - trill/tap, like Spanish perro/oro
Slender Lentis R - a slender trill/tap
Non-Lentis broad R - frictive, an r with a slight z quality
Non-Lentis slender R - frictive, an r with a strong z quality

Weirdly enough Modern Irish has Broad Lentis R for broad r and Non-lentis slender R for slender r. Although some dialects still have non-lentis broad R at the start of words, such as Cork Irish.

It's crazy that dh,th was lost only one hundred years (or less) after the Bards created their standard. The spelling system was then outdated for the next few hundred years.

BarryD wrote: »

Apologies of sorts for resurrecting an old thread but I'm puzzled by the way written Irish is often represented. I can fully understand that there are different dialects of Gaeilge and different ways of saying a word that has a particular meaning, but why represent these various ways with the same spelling? It is odd that Conchúir or Conchobhair is pronouced as Croo-hur or Crehur, not the last part but that the sound 'cruh' should be represented as 'con'.

Likewise as noted above, the common word 'cnoc' for a hill is often said as 'cruck' or 'crick' in the west. So I can take that it's fine for people in Munster to say Cnoc (Knock) and write it as Cnoc but why should Connacht or Ulster people write it thus, why not 'cruc'? Would this not be a fairer written representation of how they speak? It seems to happen with some words, so 'cnag' for a small knoll or lump or knob is seen spelt 'creig' or 'creag' in the west.

Because the written standard is continuation of the previous written standard which predates the sound changes?

So in Old Irish Conchobar was spelt exactly as it was written (word internal "b" always "bh" in Old Irish ). The prononuciation been reflected in the "Latin version" of the name:
Conchovarius or Conquovarus (latin -us added)

Likewise for Cnoc. The shift of /n/ -> /r/ in certain dialects belongs to late "Middle Irish" stage, however it wasn't reflected in the literally standard adapted around 1200 (eg. "Early Modern Irish" -- which despite it's name is as distinct from "Modern Irish" as "Middle English" is from "Modern English")

For example in Old Irish "th" would have been pronounced like in English, it's only really in 11th/12th century that it collapsed to /h/, however "Early Modern Irish" retained the "th" spelling (likewise for dh and gh merging, they had been distinct sounds before then)

One could argue thus that the preservation of spelling Conchobhar is an archaism, thence there exists spelling Conchúr which for example in Munster would be pronounced with a /n/

You see the same process in English, for example cockney's pronounce "thing" as "fing" (th -> f) however they still spell it as "thing" as that's standard english spelling. Likewise in North America where despite the "Northern Cities Vowel Shift" you still spell words the standard english way.

In case of Irish one could argue that German is an interesting parallel where standard German forms a shared literary koine but locally spoken German can be verging on nearly a separate language (Swiss German mar shampla)

BarryD wrote: »

Hmm.. thanks for above examples. It's not an area that I know enough about at all. I suspect though that written languages should and do keep pace with spoken dialects. Common enough for new terms and spellings to be added to standard English dictionaries to reflect modern usage. So why not for Irish? Apropos, came across a CD by flute player Marcus Hernon from Connemara area a while back and he complained of same problem - he had his notes and tune titles in the Irish he'd grown up with but to publish it, he had to shoehorn it into a form of written Irish that looked foreign to him. Is there a case to be made for regional spelling? Or maybe it exists in practice in real life?

English is full of words which are spelt quite differently from how they are prononunced, part of reason of course is to do with stuff like "great vowel shift" (as a result "ee" in english is same as í in Irish, whereas "ee" in Dutch is prononunced like Irish é) or the other ways english has changed over last couple hundred years.

For example look at words such as:
Island, thought, cough, laugh, debt, doubt, book, foot etc.

("gh" in english use to be prononunced until 16/17th century like broad "ch" in Irish, thence loch -> lough, and why Daragh is actually Darach and not Dara)

It's easy enough for new words to reflect current pronunciation, but if you are to change all pre-existing words you run into issues, look at for example situation with american vs. "english" spelling.

Shan Ó Cuív back nearly 100 years ago proposed a revised spelling system for Irish called "Litriú Shimplí" (in his spelling "sh" would be prononunced like in english eg. "slender s"), it was based on Munster Irish, but the idea went down like a lead balloon.

What was basically standardised on was an updated version of orthography from "Early Modern Irish" (eg. Classical texts such as used in 17th century) with updated grammar etc. Some mention publishing of Trí Biorghaoithe an Bháis in 1890 (edited by Atkinson) as if anything reviving an updated form of the"Classic spelling system"). The original text of course is by Geoffrey Keating and dates to early 17th century.

Obviously this still retained spelling combinations that were obsolete in spoken language, or was realised differently in the spoken dialects, which had undergone divergence particularly with the extinction of the intermediate dialects -- consider also that 100+ years ago you had dialect chain from Donegal to Kerry, as a result you had intermediate dialects (Clare had one closer to Connacht/South Galway, another closer to Déise Irish, think it might have had a third closer to Kerry Irish etc.)

Anyways when eventually they came about coming up with a simplified spelling (which was driven by needs of civil service), not only did they fix some issues (non-prononunced characters) but they also introduced "bugs" into the system. eg spellings that didn't conform to all of the dialects (or in some cases to none of them).

A good example of first is the word Gaeilge, which reflects Conamara usage, it's simplified version of Gaedhilge which was genitive case of Gaedhealg (you also see it spelt Gaoidhealg with genitive Gaoidhilge). a good comparison is with name of language in Scotland with is Gàidhlig ‎(genitive Gàidhlige)

In Conamara the nominative ceased to be used and default usage was the genitive while in donegal they still used in nominative reflect in spelt form as:

Whereas in Munster you have:
The "standard" (caighdeán oifigiúil) was introduced in 1957, so it wouldn't surprise me if Marcus Hernon learnt to spell in Irish with "pre-standard" style. some good pieces to read on various problems with Irish spelling:

(in context of constitution)
http://web.archive.org/web/20110721123220/http://www.constitution.ie/publications/irish-text.pdf#page=34

(article on standardisation of spelling)
https://web.archive.org/web/20131005010455/http://www.englishspellingsociety.org/journals/j22/irish.php

(Irish Times article from 1998)
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/writing-the-wrongs-1.197671

Well you would run into same issue with placenames in English, for example Tuam and Tallaght aren't really spelt how they are pronounced. As a Galwegian it's often quite funny hearing radio presenters in Dublin rhyme Tuam with "Toome/Tomb", let alone Shantalla and Lough Atalia!

In case of Garbh, the word is derived from Old Irish Garb, which in turn comes from Proto-Celtic (reconstructed) *garwos -- welsh cognate is garw. I'm not sure how it's misleading, a native speaker would pronounce Garbh as per their dialect. The same issue of course arises with the word Tarbh in placenames. (no doubt the people of Portlaoise will start complaining about how people pronounce their town name -- in contrast to local pronunciation)

In some ways one could argue that the orthography by been able to accommodate different dialect speakers in some ways reflects flexibity of systems such as Han characters (where pronunciation/word can be quite different but "character" means same thing -- contrast Mandarin and Cantonese as extreme example).

I'd be more inclined to keep the placenames as their original spelling but add notation on dialectical variation of pronunciation.

The issue of course is more to do with fact that learners of Irish aren't exposed enough to dialectical variations, after all we hear plenty of American-English on tv that by and large the average Hiberno-English speaker has no issues following an American, (if ye had never heard american pronunciation of "Mobile" before it would seem strange!) whereas often in average school class there's panic when speaker from say Donegal comes on the "aural tape", of course if ye tune in to watch a certain Donegal presenter on TG4 doing weather enough ye wouldn't have any problems!